


washed in thick black haze

by chromaberrant



Series: shades of reed [dbh oneshots] [7]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Getting Together, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Self-Harm, Touch-Starved Gavin Reed, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-24 01:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30064371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chromaberrant/pseuds/chromaberrant
Summary: There isn't a wrong time to ask for a soulmate, they say.Gavin Reed doesn't even scoff at that, anymore. People of all ages wait for a month, a year at most, before the cantrip leads them to the person they click with, and the dulling effect of the spell is lifted.He's been waiting for a decade.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Series: shades of reed [dbh oneshots] [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887745
Comments: 10
Kudos: 94





	washed in thick black haze

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Make Me Smile](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15571275) by [tunglo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunglo/pseuds/tunglo). 



> i am once again asking you to [listen to Woodkid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw2XwhMxPqU) because why come up with titles when i can steal delicious lines from songs that got me feeling some type of way -w- give me a couple more months and i'll have a fic for most if not all songs off S16
> 
>  _In your likeness_ (link above) as well as _[Enemy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imnivQChwdI)_ capture the vibes i was going for pretty well, both from Gavin's and RK's points of view.  
> i didn't get to include a lot of things that i had in mind for this au, among those a pov switch. hope the work stands on its own, though! especially bc despite originally being [a thread,](https://twitter.com/chromaberrant/status/1366884113219788800) this fic is now the longest thing on this account and (sighs and gets up and leaves)
> 
> anyway. enjoy!

There isn't a wrong time to ask for a soulmate, they say.

Gavin Reed doesn't even scoff at that, anymore. People of all ages wait for a month, a year at most, before the cantrip leads them to the person they click with, and the dulling effect of the spell is lifted.

They describe it as a new awakening, because of course they do. Gavin wonders if, after a decade with all physical sensations muted, his body is even capable of experiencing pain and pleasure again.

It’s an idle thought, an abstract musing. He won’t know unless he meets his soulmate and touches them, skin to skin. At 36, he's more or less accepted that the universe has deemed him unlovable: a broken man, with nothing more to him than the jagged edges that have driven everyone away. Maybe he would've had a shot with his friend, or his mentor, or any of the boyfriends he had, if he'd taken the spell before an attempted family reunion went horribly wrong and he fell into a string of bad choices that left him struggling not to lose himself completely.

He got clean. Picked up what was left of his career and vowed to live up to it. Took a chance that there would be someone in the world who'd see the good in him, and who he could give the best of himself to.

The soulmate-seeking magic was supposed to lead him to that person; dull his sense of touch, but sharpen his intuition, nudge him along in the search. All it did was make him sustain injury after injury that he didn't feel beyond the mechanical hindrance it posed to his movement, earning him the moniker of Terminator on the force and among the medical staff patching him up on a regular basis.

At least insurance for seekers like him is worth it, he tells Tina as she leads him to the ambulance for the third time that month, chewing him out for breaking himself to pieces just to close another case.

He wonders, then, alone in a hospital bed for observation overnight, if he should've done more to mend their friendship. If Tina was meant to be his soulmate, seeing as she’s the only human willing to get closer to him than the length of a bargepole.

It isn't unheard of for people to have different relationships with multiple soulmates, or become compatible over time even if the spell didn't lift at first, but in the morning, when Gavin can barely feel her squeeze his hand and he watches the light glint off her engagement ring, he reminds himself that he won't get between her and her happiness just on the off chance it wouldn't end in disaster.

Maybe the only kind of person he could fit with is also the bitter, jaded type that refuses to trust a mundane cantrip to magically summon a good relationship; the kind for whom heartbreak and bad blood become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The worst part — that he admits out loud, anyway, because voicing how much he misses the simple comfort of an embrace feels like the kind of vulnerability he’s never known how to deal with — is that he can't even seek reprieve in casual sex. Not for lack of trying, but although he might be able to get off with a patient enough lover, it's never satisfying the way he vaguely remembers it should be.

Only drugs work. He knows this, but he's seen enough junkies in the drunk tank and on stretchers, and remembers well enough his own episode when red ice was the hot new thing and he almost threw his whole life away chasing a hit, to steer clear of any recreational use.

(It calls all the same, sometimes, crawling under his skin where the magic can't reach it — that old itch, an ugly hunger.)

(The thought of how fast it would all be over, if he gave in, is a double-edged sword: sobering one day, alluring the next.)

He used to frequent forums and meetings of others like him, people stuck with the spell long enough to start considering it a curse, but the self-pitying atmosphere dominating the spaces made him only more depressed. He burned that bridge for good measure, too, when the community took up a new theory, so preposterous it made him laugh, then sent him into a rage when his derision was called out: that maybe their soulmates were androids, and they couldn't meet because their counterparts weren't awake yet.

What a load of shit.

It wasn't enough that androids were stealing jobs, now they were supposed to have magic — have _souls_ — and make better soulmates than him?

Gavin can believe it, that's the worst part. He'll deny it to the last of his breath, but as more and more bots break out of their programming and wind up in case files, the fear settles with cold certainty in his gut. He thinks he’s scared of war on humanity, but apocalyptic scenes are not what haunts him after yet another broken robot cowers and cries in a holding cell, pretty plastic face stricken and cold metal hands shaking.

He can tell that Cyberlife’s charade of soulless, thoughtless androids that society can use as objects is nearing its breaking point.

* * *

When it comes, he's batting away Tina's hands with an ice pack for the shiner that the latest in deviant technology has given him.

He feels... numb. The city falls apart, then picks itself up around him, and androids join the struggle for some kind of normalcy. Gavin watches it all with some unexplainable calm, falling into his routine with a confidence he hasn't felt since first donning the uniform right out of the academy.

Life doesn't change all that much, all told. Androids, both deviant and not, continue to dominate the public spaces of Detroit, as mundane as every other stranger in the streets. Cyberlife rebrands into selling upgrades and maintenance to those bots that can afford it. Gavin stays where he is, rooted in place.

It feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

He escapes into his work, because with the whole city short-staffed, crime rears up all its many heads. It consumes him whole when he’s called to a scene of a high-profile suicide; little as he cares for the inner Cyberlife politics, he cannot help but start digging when the evidence in the dead executive’s mansion seems _too_ cut-and-dried. He's got a hunch, he tells Fowler, and after a round of persistent arguing, he gets three days to follow it.

He barely sleeps. The exhaustion only catches up to him when he stands up from his desk, ready to move in on a lead, and his vision goes dark.

He takes one night to recover, and thanks himself for it later, when he opens the door to an off-the-grid research lab on property belonging to a Cyberlife subsidiary and has to dodge a GJ500 swinging for his head.

Connor, insistent on tagging along on every investigation where androids might be involved, incapacitates the guard and does his little robot savior thing. Gavin ignores the tin cans, the restless energy under his skin climbing to a fever pitch. He's never made a bust this big, if the instinct driving him is right. Like a bloodhound on a scent, he stalks deeper into the building.

The facility isn't large. Before long, he has made sure no other security will jump him, and stands facing the apparent centerpiece of the laboratory: an android in black chassis, no markers to be seen, strung up in a maintenance rig like something straight out of a sci-fi horror.

Connor circles it like a spooked cat. He touches the prototype almost fearfully, and moments later the illusion of humanity bleeds over its features. Cold, pale eyes stare them down from a copy of Connor’s face.

“RK900,” Connor says. The other android does not react.

After a tense moment of nothing, Gavin holsters his weapon and rounds the control panel linked to the rig. He keys in the credentials he’d found in the victim’s notes the previous week, and feels vindication wash over him, thick enough to send his heart racing, as the system opens up to him.

“One hell of a secret project to be developing right now,” he says to no one in particular, and goes about browsing the documentation stored on the computer. Whoever was in charge of the lab hasn't had time to cover their tracks. Gavin grins when he finally strikes gold: he locates the mission logs of the RK900, and in them, details of exactly how it performed on its first field assignment — the assassination of a Cyberlife executive who was going to go to the press with the covert ops model.

When he calls in his findings and straightens up from the terminal, Connor seems almost transfixed by his apparent successor. Gavin crosses his arms and frowns at the two of them.

"Scared, T-800?"

Connor looks at him, irritated. "Are you?"

Gavin shrugs. He suspects he can't hide his excitement, but he knows better than to count his chickens before they hatch. "I'm asking you. Is that thing going to murder us the second that clamp on its neck opens?"

"Don't worry about me, detective Reed," Connor shoots back, deadpan enough to make Gavin snort at the implied threat.

"Oh, you’ll use me as a meat shield? They grow up so fast," Gavin snarks. "Well? Are you going to convert it, or whatever you people call it?"

Connor doesn’t answer. He fixes his tie and turns to face the other android. He blinks for a few seconds, diode twirling yellow, then reaches out to place a skinless, off-white hand against the gleaming black of the RK900's chest.

"Wake up," he says, and the hairs on Gavin's neck stand on end at the gentle shift of _something_ he’s learned to associate with witches at work.

"Didn't know you fuckers did spells," he mutters. "Makes sense, though."

Connor withdraws. "What?" he asks, sparing a confused glance at Gavin, then returns his attention to the 900.

"The waking—" Gavin begins, but falters. "Nevermind. Did it work?"

"I... don't know."

"Some help you are."

"RK900, what is your mission?" Connor snaps, ignoring Gavin's snort.

"I do not have a mission," the upgraded model replies, and oh, fuck, the deeper timbre of his — its — voice makes something shiver in Gavin, despite the mechanical, flat tone. "Can I be of assistance?"

"Yeah, I need the names and faces of everyone who's been involved in sending you out on murder sprees," Gavin interjects before Connor can reply.

"You have a right to remain silent," the RK800 fires off, glaring daggers at Gavin as he recites the miranda rights to the killing machine.

The RK900 looks between them, unimpressed. "I suggest taking me to a police station before you proceed with questioning."

"Do all of you come with sarcasm pre-installed now?" Gavin grumbles, and that's that.

* * *

The lab is secured as a crime scene before long, and the two androids, prototype and guard, get carted off for questioning. Gavin doesn't envy the officers driving the cruiser with RK900; when he arrives at the precinct and takes lead on the interrogation, he is plagued by the sense that the bot could walk out any moment it pleased, handcuffs and armed officers all around or not. It doesn't help that the thing refuses offers of clothing, black chassis gleaming like the carapace of an alien all the way down from its sharp jawline, and remains unflappably helpful throughout the interview. The quiet earnestness of its replies is at such odds with the unemotional delivery and steely expression of its face that Gavin feels a new kind of drained at the end. It’s through sheer stubbornness that he finishes and submits his report, complete with names, dates, and transcripts of incriminating conversations held in the RK900's earshot in the months since the android revolution.

He was right; it is the biggest case of his career.

The wrap-up takes weeks, and that's before any of the well-connected and elusive assholes RK900 led him to can be dragged to court. The android itself becomes the focal point of the deviants’ campaign for justice, quickly falling out of Gavin’s orbit. Gavin only hears that once it was acquitted of crimes carried out on human orders, it moved into the New Jericho compound and remains as terrifyingly polite to its plastic brethren as it has been to him.

He claims he doesn’t care. He’s got Cyberlife fish to fry, and they’re slippery enough without the added hurdle of needing brand new legislation written for their crimes. It comes as no surprise when federal agents sweep in to escalate the investigation, and Gavin gets an exhausting amount of congratulatory handshakes and his long-awaited promotion as consolation prize. He’d fight harder to keep the case in DPD hands, but he knows the force is spread thin as it is, and assembling a task force to harass the one percent would be a waste of city resources.

When the whirlwind of it all dies down, he crashes.

His doctor orders a week off, inexplicably upset despite Gavin not losing any blood this time around, and gives a lecture about adequate sleep and nutrition that Gavin tunes out. He realizes quickly how much he needed it, though, when on the second day of rest he can't find the energy to get out of bed. Before the sun sets on his valiant attempt at a balanced meal, he's sinking fast into a depressive spiral.

His meds only do so much. He needs to be put to work.

It's that thought that gets him through days of compulsively scratching at his arms, the touch starvation and every single intrusive thought from the past ten years kicking in full force after weeks of workaholic frenzy.

Except when the day comes, he's greeted with a sour welcome-back gift: a partner. A plastic one — or, not plastic, but Gavin could not be bothered to name the specific alloys RK900 was made of.

His forearms itch with some phantom sensation as he faces the thing in Fowler's office and rattles off ground rules to get back to work as quickly and painlessly as he can make it.

"You wanna learn, you learn," he tells it coldly, ignoring the unnamed dread in his gut. "You keep out of my way. You signed up for this of your own free will, so you do as I say."

"Yes, Sergeant," it replies, one corner of its mouth twitching in some aborted expression. He gives it a mean half-smile for the deference and a wide berth as he makes for the door.

* * *

To Gavin's surprise, he barely notices the RK900. When he does, half of the time he has to keep himself from flinching, because whether it means to or not, it sneaks up on people with its default quiet gait and little understanding of personal space. More than once, it has to reach out and steady him, before he starts expecting it and simply steps out of the way with a muttered curse.

Its hands are big and deadly, and send foreign shivers up his arms even through his sleeves. He writes it off as part of the uncanny air of the robot, one which does not ease even as he slowly grows accustomed to its company.

He grows curious, too. Fowler has been sparing with details of the bot's employment when Gavin was returning from his break, and the occasion never seems to present itself to hear it from the horse's mouth, so Gavin sets his sights on the next best thing.

"Did you forget something, Sergeant?" Connor asks when Gavin catches him at the start of a lunch break after a prolonged briefing.

Gavin chews on his lip for a moment, then decides to go the whole way.

"Yeah, actually," he starts. "Got a question for you, but I did forget to tell you good job on the murderbot case. And—" he lifts a hand when Connor opens his mouth to protest the _murderbot_ jibe, and steels himself. "—And sorry for acting like an ass. You're getting good at what you do, I shouldn't have gone so long giving you shit for being an android."

It's as honest an apology as he can give, and he lets Connor mull it over for a bit.

He's not here for a heart-to-heart, though. Luckily, neither is Connor, if the curt nod he gives Gavin after a while is anything to go by.

"I appreciate that," the RK800 says. His lips move as if to form several responses, discarded one after another, before he smiles stiffly. "You said you had a question?"

The conversation isn't long, and Gavin is surprised to learn how little Connor knows about his apparent upgrade. He supposes even androids can fear being replaced now, and it brings him a crumb of schadenfreude.

Whatever the reason for Connor's distance from the newer RK, he still sheds some interesting light on the enigmatic android.

Gavin finds out that the bot hasn't chosen a name, and remains a black sheep in the deviant commune that shelters him as much as in the precinct. He doesn't seem to do anything except work and wait for work, either, which Gavin feels uncomfortably close to sympathetic about. The feeling gnaws at him even harder when he realizes how quickly he stopped thinking of his partner as an _it_ in the middle of these revelations.

It's all the more surprising to learn, at the end, that RK900 might not be even deviant.

"None of us fully understand his inner workings," Connor explains, visibly conflicted. "He's... placid. He objects to nothing, so long as it doesn't interfere with his mission."

"And you just let him march into law enforcement, right in your footsteps?" Gavin accuses, familiar anger climbing up his throat.

"That's the thing, Gavin. He chose this. Asked to work here, with you, and everyone assumed the insistence meant he has free will. We couldn't find any trace of it being an external order," Connor explains.

Gavin... has a lot to think about, after that.

Over the course of weeks, he pays closer attention to RK900.

The first thing he notices is that the android watches him back. Keenly.

"Planning my murder, Nines?" he tosses over his shoulder one day, when a shift of air is all that tells him that his partner has come to fetch him from his smoke break.

"I would never cause intentional harm to you, Sergeant," RK says in his usual monotone, and Gavin swallows thickly. Although he might be getting ahead in his career, his private life remains desperately lonely, and it's apparently stupid shit like a riff on the laws of robotics that's making his heart act up these days.

"Asimov would be real proud," he mutters and pockets his unlit cigarette.

The second thing he notices is the ghost of a smile RK900 gives him at that.

With time, it becomes easier to read Nines' — a nickname that stuck, despite RK's quiet reluctance to answer to it — body language and facial expressions. Most never know when he's frustrated with them, or confused by any number of illogical human oddities.

"I'm incomplete," he tells Gavin when asked about why, exactly, his only attempt at a grin sends Chris running from the breakroom; which, in turn, makes Tina laugh and joke that they had three terminators on staff now, one flesh, two metal. "Social protocols and ability to emote were to be integrated into my design after the RK800 trials concluded."

Gavin whistles. "Makes sense. But, honestly, you with a full range of expression sounds kind of horrifying." He smirks. "I mean, just look at Connor."

“Are you scared of him?”

"What, you think I'm scared of everything that's ever knocked me down?" Gavin scoffs, habitually defensive.

"I think you are smart enough to realize the kind of threat I would be, had Connor succeeded," RK says. "He hurt you for his mission, so that I could one day do much worse to more people, with far more impact."

Gavin tries very hard not to show the way his back stiffens. "What are you getting at," he demands.

Nines stares at somewhere near Gavin's elbow, which tends to mean Gavin is being closely scrutinized — scanned — for any number of cues.

The thought occurs to him that it's less about being creepy and invasive, as he'd assumed, and more about RK grasping at anything he can to understand the interactions with people around him. It makes him loosen his stance a little.

"...are you scared of me, Gavin?"

No. Yes. What a dumb question. These and more answers pass through Gavin's mind.

"You don't know me very well if you think I'd tell you if I were," is what he settles on.

RK shifts his jaw, unsure and frustrated. "Does that mean yes?"

Gavin huffs, for appearances' sake more than anything, as he thinks about it.

"Not as much as at first," he eventually admits, glancing around to check nobody's within earshot. "So, you know, if you're playing the long con to infiltrate and end humanity, good start."

RK's diode cycles red and he leans in, eyes lifting to meet Gavin's for a second. "I'm not," he assures, raising his voice above his usual volume in urgency. When Gavin shifts back, he withdraws almost more quickly than he moved forward. When he speaks again, there's a bit of what sounds like white noise edging his speech. "I am... glad that you found me when you did. If I had been finished, if I could mimic a human perfectly, I would be a machine with no choice today. I would be a tool to hurt people."

RK looks away. Gavin watches him carefully, taking in the tilt of his head that hides the color of his LED, and the way the skin of his hands fades in and out where they rest on the table between them. He waits.

After a few more seconds, the android gathers his words. There's no inhale to precede his voice, just a barely audible crackle from his parted lips that almost blends into the ambient sounds of the precinct.

"My creators knew of you. They were planning to make me stop your investigation if you got too close." RK turns his face to look directly at Gavin, the full intensity of his gaze like a blinding light. "If you weren't so fast, I would have been made to hurt you."

Gavin shivers. He knew this, read it in the reams of transcripts RK submitted the day he was found, but the shock of it couldn’t pierce through his preoccupation with everything else at the time, and having RK bring it up like this...

"Don't let it eat you," he forces through a dry throat. "I can't be hurt."

He takes his mug and leaves RK there, because he doesn't know how else to respond, and sinks his attention into work.

* * *

The more of RK’s tics Gavin notices, the harder it becomes to think of him as an unfeeling machine.

His attempts to mimic human body language vary from passable to disastrous, even if he learns fast. Gavin thinks it should worry him more, how much of the android's behavior is faked for the benefit of his human coworkers, but it becomes a surprisingly rewarding puzzle to observe the very robotic tells of his partner and learn their meaning.

His fingers are more expressive than his face, for instance.

They curl when RK is feeling defensive, and twitch in a vaguely unnerving manner when he's unsure of himself. They're perfectly still in anger. They rarely touch one another when idle, but close on his palms when processing something heavy, be it data or emotions.

Sometimes, Gavin catches the black of RK's chassis showing through the skinthetic when they're working together. He knows the android lets the projection recede when interfacing or analyzing something with the marvel of nanoengineering that the sensors in his fingertips are, but at times, it's not the clear boundary of a conscious deactivation, but what looks like smudges of charcoal just under the skin, following the seams of his joints and flexible panels beneath. Gavin's best guess at its meaning is either intense focus or a fault in the design, independent of RK's emotional states, for how often it happens around him.

He catches himself thinking what RK's hands would feel like. He knows their weight on his shoulders from the times he'd lose his footing around the robot's silent appearances, but as months pass and they learn to move around each other in the precinct and on crime scenes, Nines dutifully obeys the rules Gavin set for him on his first day, keeping his distance.

Gavin's fascination with his hands, in light of that, is becoming a problem.

It's not the first time he fixates on somebody as more than a coworker. Gavin knows the drill; he'll project their face on his fantasies for a few weeks, then the neverending frustration of the spell will wear that temporary obsession down and leave him as numb as always.

He's so fucking tired of it.

He doesn't want it to happen, he realizes one night, curled under his weighted blanket and giving in to the imagined embrace of titanium-reinforced arms. He doesn't want to have to let go and accept the disappointment again.

It would be easier to never hope in the first place, but his heart is a graceless dog, crawling back for more after each and every beating.

He snarls at RK the next day, sour and ugly in his frustration. It does the job — the android leaves him alone when not needed.

It only highlights how far Gavin has already fallen for this would-be robot assassin: they don't talk between exchanging orders and reports, don't take their — well, Gavin's — lunch together. RK isn't there with a cup of Gavin's favorite tea to get him through the afternoon slump. He doesn't come looking, either, when Gavin storms off for a smoke break and spends fifteen minutes debating whether to actually light his cigarette for the first time in years.

Nines' LED stutters and the tips of his fingers shake before he hides them under the desk when Gavin sinks back into his chair, dizzy and bright like he hasn't felt in years.

The nicotine high wears off at the sight of the android's reaction. Gavin grinds his teeth, regret thick on his tongue and the feeling of being smothered by the spell amplified twofold.

If he weren't a coward, he'd just grab the android's hand, prove it to himself that this stupid hope is as futile as every other one in his life, and try to move on, but something about this time makes him hesitate. He's not ready for the blow.

Instead, he scratches up his arms at night and presses the burning end of another smoke into his skin, shamed by his weakness but unable to stop once the dam is broken. The nicotine is soothing in the same breath as it excites, and Gavin succumbs to its draw in helpless resignation.

He picks himself up in the morning and crawls to work in a daze. He manages to forget about the injuries hidden under long sleeves and lazy bandaging, until Tina sweeps by his desk and drags him off by the wrist to an empty office. He doesn't have it in him to protest getting away from his desk and RK's presence until she sits him down next to a first aid kit and pushes up his shirtsleeves, the dark fabric stained darker with drops of blood.

"What do you care," he rasps even as he lets her clean and wrap the gouges and burns he's made. She doesn't bother being gentle and he doesn't react beyond swallowing down mild nausea at the sight of his blood welling up with no sting to it.

"Nines texted that you're bleeding and thought you'd rather I be the one to check on you," she says, reproach and worry equal in the frown she gives him. "He's normally at your beck and call. What'd you say to him?"

Gavin can hear the tension in his own jaw increase. "Nothing."

"Gav."

He tears his arm away. "I'm not in the mood, T."

"You're clearly in _a_ mood, you ass," she challenges and seizes his wrist again to secure the dressings in place. "You don't need to tell me right now, but don't be stupid, okay? You're not alone."

That's kind of the problem, he doesn't say. Tina sighs and helps him put his sleeves back in place.

"Where are your smokes?" she asks as they pack up the first aid kit.

"Right jacket pocket," he says with a wince.

"Want me to take them away?"

Gavin counts his breaths.

It grates that he has to rely on somebody else's control for something he's been capable of avoiding for so long, but this is as gentle a call to get his shit together as Tina can deliver. He nods.

He regrets it not ten minutes later, when, instead of pocketing his cigarettes, Tina drops them in the drawer of RK's desk. Gavin stares at her, feeling inexplicably betrayed as she bids the two of them goodbye and leaves on patrol.

Neither he nor RK know how to act after that. Gavin fumes quietly, struggling to focus on work. He reminds himself that he and Tina are friends because she never pulled her punches. It's hard to appreciate the sentiment behind her gesture, though, when he's so fucking hung up on why he shouldn't want to put this kind of trust in RK in the first place.

Or maybe she just wanted to make absolutely sure he wouldn't ask to smoke, or didn't want to deal with acting as a grown ass man's impulse control. Gavin wouldn't blame her.

He still types out and deletes a few furious texts to her, in between bouts of fidgeting.

* * *

All that and more flees from his list of concerns roughly an hour later. A tip has come in about a missing person in the case of a splinter group of deviant androids; someone saw the former Cyberlife engineer resurface in a run-down neighborhood, acting suspiciously.

Gavin is nervous. Something feels off about the deviants clamoring to make themselves a menace, threatening ex-Cyberlife employees from Tower office workers to storefront staff, then escalating to kidnappings, and none of the robots at Jericho knowing anything about it.

A new kind of suspicion blooms in the pit of his stomach as they're nearing the address, and Gavin pulls over.

"Are we walking from here?" RK asks quietly.

"Not yet," Gavin says. "Tell me something. Have you been hiding shit from me on this case?"

RK meets Gavin's hard gaze with wide eyes and red LED. In the quiet car, the burst of static from his throat is unmissable. "I didn't think you noticed," he rushes to say, hands almost shaking in his lap, and Gavin's blood runs cold. "The— the gaps in the data didn't seem—"

"What fucking gaps?" Gavin snarls, feeling anger rise up in him like a tidal wave. "You on their side now?!"

"No!'' The tremble in RK's hands is evident now, traveling up his arms and beginning to make his shoulders quiver. He tries to speak, but something seems wrong with his jaw, and after a moment of distressed blinking, he clamps his teeth together and his voice comes from the car speakers. "Neither me nor the androids in New Jericho are in any kind of contact with the group. The decline in my ability to analyze evidence on scene is a fault of my own. I'm sorry I haven't disclosed it, Sergeant. I didn't expect it to have an impact just yet."

Gavin leans back in his seat. "We're talking about different issues," he realizes. Relief makes him deflate. "Fucking hell, RK."

The car falls into silence, thick and awkward.

"Did you suspect that I was aiding the Red Ring?" Nines asks, still through the speakers, making Gavin jump.

"Yeah. Sorry. I'm just— not in it today."

"Was that suspicion the reason for your anger with me since yesterday?"

Gavin swallows. It would be so easy to take this excuse.

He should say yes. Nines would take the lack of faith hard and distance himself from Gavin. Probably work harder going forward, too. Gavin wouldn't have to dance around his unrequited crush and why it makes him lash out, either.

"No," he says, hating how choked up he sounds. He clears his throat and barrels on. "You— you go ahead and get your sensors checked tomorrow. Fuck knows you deserve the PTO." With that, he turns on the blinker and checks the road. "Let's get this over with."

They drive slowly and in tense silence, looking for the missing woman along pothole-riddled roads and houses that look abandoned. Nines takes to flexing his fingers, skin fading in and out in patches, and Gavin hates how much of his attention is drawn to that little detail in his peripheral vision.

"Up ahead," RK says suddenly, switching back to his voice modulator this time. "Entering that building."

"That our missing person?" Gavin asks. He catches only the silhouette of someone disappearing in the shadows cast by the husk of a two-story office ruin.

"They match the description from the tip," Nines confirms. “This building is condemned. They shouldn't enter it."

"If nothing else, we're gonna catch a trespasser, then," Gavin murmurs and parks on the side of the road. "Just what I dreamed of doing at this rank."

"Saving people from harm?" RK asks quietly, and Gavin has to busy himself with undoing his seatbelt to hide the way that one line is making his face red.

He should've lied to his android. Maybe, if he did, he wouldn't be reminded of what he could be — to someone, to himself — if he weren't a jaded asshole with a chip on his shoulder, numb to the world.

He doesn't look at RK as he crosses the empty lot with weeds growing through pavement. "Circle around back," he says over his shoulder. The android disappears from his side without a sound. Gavin squares his shoulders, and enters the dark maw of a sooty garage bay door.

The structure inside feels cavernous, but somehow oppressive at the same time. "Hello?" he calls, hoping there aren't squatters he's going to have to chase out of this rat trap. "Detroit police! We're looking for a miss—"

Something clangs around a corner.

Gavin spots footprints in the dust and detritus covering the ground, and follows them towards the noise. Even as he announces himself and his intentions again, he feels ill at ease. There's a hex on this place, and he measures his every step, praying there isn't a loose brick or rusty nail with his name on it in this ruin.

He makes it through the entrance of a spacious room, littered with rusty metal tables and what he assumes is charred construction equipment, when there's a telltale rustle behind him.

He gets a glimpse of someone swinging a bent pipe at his head and only has time for the flash of thought that he should've accounted for that in his prayer, and then he goes down hard.

* * *

Awareness returns to him painted in a red glow, roaring and crashing.

Gavin lifts his head and has to wait for his vision to stop swimming. There's the unmistakable heat and glare of a spreading fire, the air choked with dust and smoke.

He clumsily sits up and pulls the collar of his shirt over his mouth and nose, squinting at his surroundings. His heart is racing, body aware of danger before he can pinpoint an escape. He's not exactly where he went down, as far as he can tell. Worst of all, his left hip and leg are pinned down by a collapsed cabinet, glass sparkling on the ground around him. He has to look away and measure his breaths for a few seconds when he spots blood, too.

He's never been more glad to be cursed than in this moment. Panic, he can work through; he feels enough of the damage the heavy piece of furniture did to know it's bad.

The ceiling above him is making noises he'd rather not think about too closely. The door on the far end of the room is already on fire. Gavin grits his teeth and tries to shove the cabinet off. He's panting by the time it budges at all. He can't pull in enough air.

Where the fuck is his partner?

"Ni—"

He starts to cough before he can get the name out.

He bears down on the piece of garbage trapping him, fueled by the last of his desperation. He's walked away from too many scrapes to die like this, fitting though it might be. With a yell, he manages to push it another inch—

Arms appear at his sides and throw the cabinet away, as if it weighed nothing.

RK crouches beside Gavin, eyes wide, hands flitting over the length of his body; frantic, searching. His lips move, but no speech comes out.

"You can't hurt me." Gavin grabs his lapels and hauls himself close. "Just get us out of here."

Something cracks above them and RK doesn't waste more time. Gavin's leg doesn't move right as Nines picks him up, but he'll worry about that later. He clings to the android and ducks his head as RK dashes through the burning, collapsing structure. They don't slow down until they're near the car, and Gavin leans against the hood when RK sets him on his feet. He feels lightheaded as he tests his leg, then grunts when it gives out under him.

Nines it at his side in an instant, static in his throat as he helps Gavin sit with his back against the tire.

In the late afternoon light, his leg looks a mess. His jeans caught most of the glass, but there's a cut on the outside of his thigh that means he's going to need a new pair, even if the bleeding is already slowing. His ankle might be sprained, and his hip protests when he bends his bad leg to keep the wound a little elevated.

Nines reappears at his side with a water bottle, fingers rattling against the cap when he tries to open it. Gavin pulls it from his hands and takes a long swig.

"You good to talk?" he asks.

RK's mouth tightens, then he launches right into ASL.

It's a little hard to follow — Gavin is rusty, RK is distraught and it shows in his signs more than it ever could in his voice, and that alone makes something in Gavin's chest ache. He gets the gist, though: the woman they'd been looking for — alleged victim of Red Ring kidnapping — made it out the other side. RK surprised her; she refused to answer questions, and bolted as soon as his attention was caught by an explosion and the rapidly spreading fire.

"You didn't try to stop her?"

RK shakes his head. "I had to find you," he signs.

Gavin closes his eyes — but almost immediately they fly open, because the wind carries the choking smell of burning construction, stealing his breath as if he hasn’t got out at all. He can't be thinking about how close he came to dying in there, right now.

He has to focus.

"Emergency services are on their way," Nines adds when Gavin can see his hands again.

"Good bot," he murmurs. His gaze meets RK's, and the android doesn't look away like usual.

He looks at Gavin like he's scared he might disappear.

"You could've died in there," Gavin says, suddenly desperate to fill the silence, because he doesn't know what to do with the feelings churning right under the surface. "We would be — holy shit. Were we being baited? Nines. What would it even take to kill you? A fire like—"

A blast of scorching air and an ear-rending boom cut him off.

Nines moves like lightning, shielding Gavin with his own body, as debris is sent far and wide.

"I guess that answers my question," Gavin wheezes. Blood is rushing in his ears, drowning out the world, and Nines' face blocks the view of everything beyond the suddenly negligible space between them.

He doesn't think. He lifts his hands and cups his android's face, because if he dies today, he might as well get in one last stupid thing done before he goes.

Something shifts, and for a split second Gavin thinks it was another explosion, but this is different: like his ears popping, except the sudden clarity is impossible to pinpoint. He couldn't hope to, either, not when his body becomes awash in myriad pains, all-encompassing.

He wants to speak, to ask if he's dying, if the fire has reached them, but all he can manage is a reedy whine through clenched teeth; and oh, he feels the scrapes and the burns, the cuts and the bruises blossoming all down his side; the screaming tendons, and the pipe blow — and his tongue in his mouth, and his dripping blood. The clothes against his skin. The hard pavement, the metal behind him, and synthetic against his face and under his fingers: RK, touching him, skin receding in patches around where they connect.

Gavin sobs.

Breaks down in uncontrollable whimpers and big, ragged wails. His eyes burn hard enough to blot out all agony for one, unbearable second, and then he can feel tears roll freely down his face until RK sweeps them gently away, making way for new ones.

"You," Gavin chokes out between all the helpless noise he's making. "It's you."

"I'm here," RK mouths, and the words nestle between Gavin's ribs like a keystone.

He can't make sense of anything, but under the cacophony of pain his body has turned into, an ache he didn't realize was there disappears. He hurts from head to toe, and it suddenly strikes him as incredibly cheesy to feel so light inside.

"You feeling this too?" he asks, as sirens draw close and paint RK's face red and blue. "It's not just me losing my mind, right?"

RK just glitches, but when he leans in and rests his forehead against Gavin's, it's like a spell sealing itself. For a bright, undiluted second, they're joined mind to mind; an interface of souls, asserting each other as their own.

Gavin laughs for the both of them.

They share in the disbelief and wordless elation until paramedics swarm them to poke and prod their many bumps and scrapes.

Gavin does his level best not to whine and cry from all the pain, the sting of it still new and unexpected with every move. He still groans and hiccups as he's loaded on a stretcher, but it's the sight of Nines at his side that invariably brings back the waterworks.

He doesn't mind. He can see it in the way Nines keeps looking at him, feel it in the stubborn grip on his hand. RK has seen the worst he has to offer, and found enough beside it to choose him anyway.

Impossible, and yet. Delirious with the pain, Gavin cannot find a way to refute its truth.

* * *

The night is a blur. Familiar nurses walk him through hospital procedures, and end up gathering in his room when he's allowed to rest with his leg in a splint and bandages all over. He can't begrudge them being worse gossips than his own precinct; not when, despite jokes and jabs, they appear genuinely thrilled for their regular of ten years to find his soulmate.

It's hard to concentrate on the congratulations mixed in with sympathy — he was refused strong painkillers on account of his head injury — and it's proving to be a bitch to keep himself from drifting into fitful sleep, so they leave him to rest before long.

He wakes for no discernible reason before dawn, feeling like ground meat but instinctively aware that he's okay. He blinks in the low light and looks to the side, unsurprised to find a little spinning light in the shadows.

"Pretty sure it's not visiting hours," he rasps with a grin.

Nines unfolds himself from a chair, sleek and dark like a hunting panther, and a little shiver runs down Gavin's spine. There's no doubt his android was built for stealth and infiltration when he moves to Gavin's bedside soundlessly.

There's no doubt that he's become so much more, either, when he takes Gavin's outstretched hand and presses it to his chest, like something precious.

"I'm sorry I couldn't come earlier," he says quietly. "I had to report what happened. There's an APB out for—"

"Relax," Gavin interrupts him. He squeezes the hand holding his, relishing in the sensation of all the different textures that make up his android. "Don't tell me you're on duty right now."

RK's fingers twitch around Gavin's. "I'm certain you've gathered, Sergeant, but I rarely am off duty."

"Well, I am right now. Call me Gavin for once." He smiles and pulls the android's hand onto his stomach, where he starts to trace patterns in the fading skinthetic. He swallows nervously. "So... I didn't know you were looking for a soulmate."

"I wasn't really," RK admits in a small voice. "I was just looking for you."

Gavin looks up, surprised. "Huh?"

There's a little grimace on RK's lips and his eyes are bright when he turns his face directly to Gavin — his own way of smiling. It makes Gavin's heart race.

"From the day Connor broke me out of my orders, I wanted to follow you," RK explains. "I couldn't name the emotion at the time, but I hated being made to kill. It meant everything to me that you were smart and driven enough to foil that.

"Then I had to find my footing as a freshly deviant android," he continues, and his LED swirls orange for a moment. "It was... Difficult. Androids don't admit it, but there is a difference between being freed and breaking free. I still thought and acted like a machine when I was granted the position of your consultant."

Gavin feels his brows furrow. "So you had to… deviate yourself? How’d that go?"

RK's eyelids glitch a little, and Gavin gets the impression that this is how his android laughs. "I don't really know," he says.

"You don't know?"

Nines shakes his head. "It was gradual, the more I wanted to reach out for you. I think it was the fear that you would reject me that eroded the last of the red walls in me."

"And I still almost did," Gavin breathes. "I was stupid."

"You have your moments." RK beams at him again.

Gavin huffs a laugh. "Smartass. Can't believe I waited ten years for you." Then he sobers and grips RK's hands tighter. "Look, this — you being my soulmate — is massive for me. I'm still going to be awful to you sometimes, that's just how I am, but." He inhales, surprised to feel his eyes water. "I wanna do right by you. Whatever we become, I want you to not regret this. I'll try."

"You give yourself so little credit," Nines says softly. "I've had all my life to make this decision."

Gavin can't help laughing at that, even though it rattles into a pained cough immediately. "Eight months? You're a baby," he wheezes when he regains breath.

"Hmm. I think I'd like you to call me that again," RK pronounces, making Gavin sputter on what little air he’s got.

“I take that back, you’re a menace,” he grumbles, but his face hurts from how hard he’s smiling. RK is tipping his chin up a little, unbearably smug, but Gavin can see an almost ethereal blue glow peek through the seams of his bare chassis through his unbuttoned collar. "Holy shit, are you blushing?" he asks, grinning, and reaches to trace the lines.

"I... seem to be, yes." Nines looks down and flattens his shirt against his torso. There, between where a human's ribs would meet the bottom of the sternum, Gavin can make out a light strong enough to show through the fabric. "It feels..."

"Intense," Gavin murmurs, knowing without asking. Something occurs to him then. "Your sensors okay? You said something was off."

Nines turns Gavin's hand between his, running his fingers over the skin and making him shiver. "Performing optimally," he answers. "I think… if magic is about intent, perhaps I willed a reflection of your seeking spell on myself. My research indicates that it’s not unheard of for a compatible person in a seeker’s life to spontaneously experience dulled sensations."

"Good that is over," Gavin sighs. He can't get comfortable, but in this moment, he feels content. He sags into his pillows, then winces when trying to adjust sends a stab of pain through his leg. "Fuck. One hell of a day we chose for this fucking revelation," he jokes.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry for that."

"It's okay, baby." The pet name slips out so easily Gavin is almost startled by it. He smiles and carries on. "I’ll live. And I have the rest of my life to feel the good things again."

Nines squeezes his hand. “With me.”

“With you.”

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell how much real estate in my brain does Make Me Smile still occupy? archive user tunglo wherever you are i love you and what you did for my writing style & mental image of RK900
> 
> no i still don't know what to finish a story with
> 
> yep this is another fic linking the [detroit: new era discord](https://discord.gg/eYJ2f8s) in end notes :^)


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